ZOMBIE SCHOOL
101: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
by Aaron Jenkins
Copyright 2015 Aaron Jenkins
CONTENTS
1. I AM A TEENAGE ZOMBIE
2. THE PERKS OF BEING A ZOMBIE
3. ZOMBIE EDUCATION
4. THE HUMAN DILEMMA
5. ZOMBIE SHENANIGANS
6. BORED STIFF
7. THE ZOMBIE’S APPRENTICE
8. ZOMBIE NIGHTS
9. HUMAN BREEDING 101
10. ZOMBIES AFTER DARK
11. DUMB ZOMBIE THINGS
12. CHASING SHADOWS
13. REVENGE OF THE STIFFS
14. DEAD WEIGHT
15. BAD BLOOD
16. MY PET HUMAN
17. BACK TO SQUARE 1
18. CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
19. ZOMBIE PROBATION
20. THE ZOMBIE MAN
21. BREAKING IN
22. WELCOME TO ZOMBIE HELL
23. COLD HANDS
24. LORD OF THE FLIES
25. DAMNED
26. ZOMBIE ON THE RUN
27. WORSE THINGS
28. LOSSES
29. LIFE AND DEATH
30. AWAKENINGS
31. ALMOST HOME
32. SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
ZOMBILOGUE
1. I AM A TEENAGE ZOMBIE
Math is hard. Even more so if you’re a zombie—which I am. No matter how much I try to focus on the formulas and memorize them, all I can seem to think about is brains. Four times nine equals ... brains! Four squared is ... brains! Brains plus brains equals ... yum! I’m telling you. If you think math is hard, try being a zombie. School is way harder when you’re a zombie.
2. THE PERKS OF BEING A ZOMBIE
I sat at my desk, doodling a picture of a plump, knobby brain over the lined paper of my notebook. It looked so good I wanted to eat it off the page. But I restrained myself. Nothing was more embarrassing in zombie school than devouring your notebook because you couldn’t control your brain cravings.
My name is Zellner Olander.
Pause.
Now I know what you’re going to say. Zellner the Zombie? I know. But I think it’s sort of poetic justice, like I was meant to be a zombie. I only know my name was Zellner because of the student ID I had in my wallet when I was zombified. Zellner had actually been my last name. But my first name was too boring. It was so boring I won’t even tell you what it was. Zellner sounded so much cooler, so that’s who I am. Zellner. It oozes epicness, don’t you think?
I go to school at Oakrest High School in Revenant. Revenant is the name of our zombie town, a collection of communities we have developed after humans had been driven out of the area. Only adolescent zombies go to school at Oakrest. The older zombies who are being educated go to the learning center. We didn’t name the high school, by the way. It was given that name by the humans who used to live in this area, and there wasn’t much sense in changing it. Oakrest used to be a town inhabited by humans in the Northeast of America, before zombies took over the world. All of the buildings we occupied were former human structures. We really don’t have the resources to start constructing our own buildings yet. We’re mostly focused on surviving, thankyouverymuch.
Oakrest High School is pretty big. It has two floors, though the south end is burned out. There’s a huge hole in the wall where the gym had been, and the interior stretching back to the cafeteria had been scorched and destroyed. We usually do gym outside, though, so it works out. As zombies we can’t really get into better shape, but it helps keep our bodies limber and flexible. If a zombie sits or stands still for too long, his muscles start to get stiff.
My friend Trevor thinks being a zombie is the best thing ever. And while education can be a real drag at times, especially when that midday brain craving hits, I can’t really disagree with him. There’s a lot of perks of being a zombie – we are tough, and strong, and immortal, unless our brains are destroyed. Yeah, being a zombie is pretty awesome.
I don’t remember what it was like to be human, though I was one for sixteen years. Zombies don’t retain memories after they reanimate, only residual skills they may have developed in their human lives. We think it has something to do with muscle memory, but it’s hard to say. Zombie science has come a long way, but there’s still a lot to learn.
I know what you’re thinking right now, Joe (for the sake of convenience, and because I don’t know anything about you, I’m going to assume your name is Joe. Feel free to insert your real name in its place). Zombie science? Zombie school? I thought zombies were mindless. I thought all zombies wanted to do was kill and eat people. I didn’t know zombies could talk, or write, or even think.
Well, Joe, let me tell you, it surprises most people. But that’s where zombie school comes in. Let me break it down for you.
The things you know about zombies are generally true, depending on what you might have heard. Zombies only have one instinct – to eat living human brains. That’s it. That’s what they live for. Outside of that, the life of zombie is pretty meaningless. Most zombies spend their entire deaths mindlessly searching for fresh human brains to devour, and when they aren’t doing that, they busy themselves with all the fun and excitement that being a capricious, mindless Neanderthal yields.
The zombie awakening happened decades ago. I don’t even know if I had been born yet at the time. We don’t have a lot of information on the details. With the human race ravaged by the voracious undead, written histories sort of fell by the wayside. What we do know is that a virus began to spread. It wasn’t a deadly virus, and it came quietly and undetected. A human would never even know he was infected in his lifetime. Only his loved ones would realize it, some hours after he drifted peacefully into a natural death, when his corpse reanimated and tried to devour them.
The virus is passed through bodily fluids. It wasn’t such a bad virus, in of itself. Those infected got to lead perfectly normal, healthy lives. The problem came afterward, when the dead reawakened. The virus would easily be transmitted to any humans the newly born zombie attacked, and in the event that the zombie didn’t succeed in devouring its prey’s brain, a new zombie was born out of the human’s eventual death. Thus began the zombie inception.
It wasn’t long before zombies made up a majority of the world’s population. That was helped by the fact that zombies only died when their brains stopped functioning. And as long as a zombie gets a fresh brain every few months, its brain will stay active. Zombies take a long time to die out. It’s no wonder we took over the world as quickly as we did.
I realize that none of this sounds very auspicious on the surface. I have to admit, the idea of being a mindless ravenous reanimated corpse doesn’t exactly sound all that gratifying. And it’s not. An afterlife like that is almost as good as being dead. Almost.
Thankfully for me, I’m not in that boat. Because not all zombies are mindless and ravenous. Not anymore. Something happened, a long time ago. Somehow, zombies got smart.
I chewed on the end of my pencil, gnawing at the eraser. It was so pink and soft I could have sworn it was a juicy piece of brain. I shook my head and forced myself to stare forward at the blackboard, making myself jot down the formula that was written in chalk on it. Honestly, when in the world was a zombie ever going to have to do algebra? It’s not like we had to calculate the circumference of some dude’s head before we cracked it open and scarfed down his brain.
We don’t know exactly how some zombies gained intelligence. That’s a pretty big mystery, kind of like trying to understand how exactly humans got smarter than all the other animals in the world. We just did. And we didn’t just get smart. We gained awareness. We learned how to do things that most humans are capable of doing – thinking, speaking
, writing, and control. Autonomy. Pretty cool, right? Well, if you’re a zombie, it’s the best thing that’s happened since sliced brains. It kind of sucks for humans. And Joe, if you’re a human, I’m sorry about that. But that’s life.
From then on, zombies started to learn. That’s when zombie education began.
3. ZOMBIE EDUCATION
Have you ever heard the expression “if you give an infinite number of monkeys a typewriter and give them an infinite amount of time, they will write Shakespeare?” That’s sort of how zombie education starts.
If you put a zombie in a room with enough time, and enough motivation, eventually, it will learn.
It’s sort of like those lab rat experiments, where you put rats in a maze, and if they go the right way, they get a piece of cheese. You give a zombie a test. If it gets the answer right, it gets a piece of brain. Eventually, after a while, to get the brain, the zombie has to learn. And it does. Because zombies will do anything for human brains. True story.
And that’s how the zombie race split off.
Not all zombies get educated. In a world overrun by zombies that’s just impossible. Especially considering our fledgling community of smart zombies is still in its relative infancy. And thankfully, most zombies seem incapable of learning without some sort of formal education to guide them. Thankfully because if all zombies in the world were smart, there wouldn’t be enough human brains to go around to keep us all unliving.
We have to draw the line somewhere. And while we acknowledge that the uneducated zombies of the world are our brothers in some ways, they are also our ancestors. And